Author Topic: 2016 Dryfire Challenge! (Read 12169 times)

JTH · « **on:** January 02, 2016, 12:40:18 PM »

I'd like to get better at physical shooting skills in 2016. To do that, though, I'm going to need to actually practice. (I did some decent shooting in 2015, but I didn't practice nearly enough to really get better.)

Awhile back I designed a simple, straightforward dryfire drill that people could do easily every single day: Drill Zero. I wanted to create a drill that would make a significant difference to shooting quickly and accurately, but was simple, straightforward, took little time, and required almost nothing in the way of equipment or space.

There are a ton of people out there who participate in 1000-day DryFire Challenges and so on (mudnrox here I believe managed one!) so I'm inviting everyone here to join me in a 2016 Dryfire Challenge.

Here's a report card: 2016 Dryfire Report

Simply color in every day you spend at least SOME time increasing your physical skills with a firearm. (Whether dryfire, live fire, or testing your skills in a class or competition.)

If you think that you can't get to the range that often (completely understandable!) and you don't have time every day to strap on all your gear for dryfire practice (that happens too) then read about Drill Zero, and use that so that you get at least SOME practice every day.

https://precisionresponse.wordpress.com/2016/01/02/2016-resolution-i-practicing-drill-zero/

My personal goal for 2016 is that every single day I will practice physical pistol skills in some fashion, and on the Dryfire Report I’m going to mark in black days I do Drill Zero, blue the days I do longer dryfire sessions, red the days I live fire practice, and green the days I test myself either in competitions or in training classes.

If I miss my goal---well, I'll keep going on and seeing how many days I can keep making myself better. If at the end of the year I don't meet my goal but I still practiced 300 out of the 365 days, I'm still going to get better. I've already marked out in black the first two days of the year--got my Drill Zero done yesterday and today--and tomorrow I get to color in a green spot because we have a USPSA match.

Anyone else want to do this, too? Pretty easy--just get a copy of the Dryfire Report! Who's with me?

tstuart34 · « **Reply #1 on:** January 02, 2016, 01:14:39 PM »

I'm in thanks you!

Sent from my VS985 4G using Tapatalk

abbafandr · « **Reply #2 on:** January 02, 2016, 03:41:58 PM »

Nothing to lose, I'm in

HuskerXDM · « **Reply #3 on:** January 02, 2016, 08:32:32 PM »

I'm in.

JTH · « **Reply #4 on:** January 03, 2016, 06:51:16 PM »

Well, I got my first green square on the record sheet today---shot the USPSA match at ENGC. (The weather wasn't that bad, actually---no wind, and it was sunny out.)

The match itself was a good explanation of exactly why I need to practice my eye focus and trigger control on a daily basis---I ended up winning Production, but only because the other two top folks in Production ALSO screwed up just as many stages as I did.

In Production, you really need to be shooting a MINIMUM of 90% of the available points, without giving up any speed. Those are the folks that are doing well. And in this match, I had two mikes (unacceptable ever) and *7* D-hits (which should be unacceptable ever, really). Considering there were only four stages, that's pretty sad. There was only one difficult target in the entire match, and that was only because it was a little farther off than normal, and yet, my accuracy was poor. (Only shot 84.91% of the available points. That's not going to win any level II matches...)

....because in a number of cases, I was pulling the trigger without a solid focus on the front sight. Sure, there are plenty of targets where you can use a half-target-focus, and get perfect A-hits. But often you can't, and if you still try to shoot with that half-target-focus, you are going to drop points.

That was me today. (I also just yanked the trigger on a couple of occasions, so as always, my trigger control needs work.)

Drill Zero should help with both of those main problems. My movement was good, my gun handling wasn't bad (outside of one memorable didn't-quite-manage-it-reload), and my stage plans were just fine.

...I just need to use the sights and have good trigger control. Minor issues, right?

While I think local matches are tons of fun, I REALLY like the fact that they are tests of your shooting skills---and they show really quickly what you need to work on.

Apparently for me, Drill Zero is what I need to work on. A LOT.

How about you guys? What do you think of Drill Zero? Any thoughts about it? If you shot the match, what did it tell you about your shooting?

abbafandr · « **Reply #5 on:** January 03, 2016, 07:42:08 PM »

I shot, poorly, today. Really going to give Drill Zero ( and other dryfire) a serious try. A few thousand extra quality trigger pulls can't hurt, can they?

Definitely going to do something with the front sight so my old eyeballs can pick it up better and quicker.

For January, not a real bad day for shooting.

I made a spreadsheet to track my dryfire report, since I know that piece of paper will disappear somewhere.

Lorimor · « **Reply #6 on:** January 04, 2016, 04:34:13 PM »

Already a fan of Drill Zero.

Picked up a box of Crayola non-toxic markers in the HyVee tactical aisle today.

JTH · « **Reply #7 on:** January 10, 2016, 04:48:43 PM »

Well, it has been a week, so I thought I'd post a picture of my dryfire report and talk about whether it has made any difference yet. We normally don't think of a mere week as sufficient to make much difference (unless we are in a class for the entire week) but if you think about it, as long as we have done at least Drill Zero every day, that's 210 perfect trigger pulls we've done in the last week alone...that's got to amount to something, right?

Here's my report:

I shot a USPSA competition and an IDPA competition, mostly did only Drill Zero each day, but did get some additional dryfire practice both last Friday, and today. (The black/blue on Friday is because I did Drill Zero in the morning, but after work came home and got some additional dryfire practice done later.)

And a good thing, too---because I shot a different gun in a different division in the IDPA match yesterday, and the stages were ALL weak-hand-only, with your strong arm in a sling. Luckily, last Friday I did some extra dryfire practice including weak-hand-only trigger work with the G19 I was going to use in the IDPA match. It helped!

No red on the report yet--was going to get to the range today or tomorrow, but....the weather is doing a really good job of attempting to convince me that I don't need to live fire right now. (On the report, black is only Drill Zero dryfire, blue is a longer dryfire practice, green is a shooting competition, and red is live fire.)

I'm not going to say that I feel a huge difference in only a week---but I WILL say that I can feel perhaps a bit of a difference already in how fast my eyes switch focus to the front sight. As we get older, our eyes don't want to change focal length as quickly, and the extra practice is something I need. (My eyes are rapidly going downhill, and it sucks.)

How about you guys? What do your reports look like? If you have missed a day or two, we won't throw you from the group, by the way. You are still getting in more practice than all the people who have read this thread and article, and have decided that they don't need to practice!

How's it going so far? The report helping keep you doing it every day?

Lorimor · « **Reply #8 on:** January 10, 2016, 06:31:24 PM »

Missed one day. No red days either. Fair weather shooter here. I'm not sure if it's made a noticeable difference yet, but in the long run, I believe it will. Prior to this new training regimen, I relied on Dot Torture and good intentions to improve my WHO shooting. (Well, maybe there were other drills involved along the way.)

Only 12 points down in the IDPA match Saturday AM. (Shooting wise anyway.)

Some day it will warm up. Then I will break out the red tactical marker. And Heartland has some stuff on the calendar it appears.

Edited to add: Don't know why the image is inverted. Looks good on the iPad and iMac. Must be a Windows thing.

abbafandr · « **Reply #9 on:** January 11, 2016, 11:26:43 AM »

Well, I missed a day also

. Might get 2 competition this weekend. Really need some live fire practice. Also just a fair weather shooter

abbafandr · « **Reply #10 on:** January 12, 2016, 08:27:47 PM »

Quote from: jthhapkido on January 10, 2016, 04:48:43 PM

As we get older, our eyes don't want to change focal length as quickly, and the extra practice is something I need. (My eyes are rapidly going downhill, and it sucks.)

Wait a couple more decades, it doesn't get any better. (Ask me how I know)

The report is helping me keep it up. If somebody does something regularly for several days it becomes a habit.

JTH · « **Reply #11 on:** January 31, 2016, 02:50:53 PM »

Well, my first month of practice is up.

And dang it, I missed a day. I got up late, thought to myself "I'll have time when I get home from work because I'm not doing anything this evening" then when I got home from work I thought "I did that this morning, I can just relax" and the next day I got up and looked at my report and said DANG IT!!!!

On the good side, once I got a couple of weeks into the month, I had a chance to start doing more extended dryfire sessions, and actually got to the range a couple of times for live fire. Overall, 5 live-fire occasions this month, 10 extended dryfire sessions, and 17 Drill Zero sessions.

And one missed day. DANG IT.

...nonetheless, particularly with respect to SHO and WHO transitions and trigger control, I can see a difference.

How about you guys? How do the reports look? Anything you've noticed happening?

Sometime this week I'm going to try to put up a video with some variations on Drill Zero you can do instead, that take similar amounts of time but allow you to work on your skills in a slightly different fashion. Drill Zero can't do everything, and variations are fun to try.

abbafandr · « **Reply #12 on:** February 02, 2016, 11:47:41 AM »

I missed a day also early on. Kinda getting to be a daily habit to dryfire in some form.

Haven't made to the range for live fire

got a few drills want to try.

Did shoot 3 competitions though.

Finally figuring out what those metal pieces on the top of the slide are for

JTH · « **Reply #13 on:** February 02, 2016, 02:32:09 PM »

Quote from: abbafandr on February 02, 2016, 11:47:41 AM

Finally figuring out what those metal pieces on the top of the slide are for.

I still have problems with that.

JTH · « **Reply #14 on:** February 04, 2016, 12:27:51 PM »

Finished writing the article with some variations on Drill Zero that you can do to change things up. Still won't take any more time, and (other than printing out one page) doesn't take any more equipment than Drill Zero originally did.

For me personally, the good thing was that writing this out made a couple of days of my dryfire pretty solidly energetic, and I got in a LOT more reps than normal figuring out exactly how I wanted to explain it.

https://precisionresponse.wordpress.com/2016/02/03/drill-zero-variations/

Is Drill Zero being of use? How is practice going? Let me know what you think, and also what you think of the variations---after some practice, are they helping? Are they fixing the issues with Drill Zero that they are supposed to fix?

For folks just reading this for the first time---get yourself a copy of the Dryfire Report from the Drill Zero article, and join in! Yes, you have 3 minutes each day in which you can practice---and it will make a difference.

And for those who have missed days---ok, so what? Keep practicing!

Lorimor · « **Reply #15 on:** February 04, 2016, 08:19:01 PM »

Yeah, I'm still in, spotty as it may be. Will try the new variations even though it will overload my onboard 4k of RAM.

Yes, it has been of use. I'm working harder on picking up that front sight thing as I refocus. I'm finding that if I slightly bend my wrist to elevate the muzzle, this front sight thing is easier to pick up as I drop it down into the rear sight notch thing.

JTH · « **Reply #16 on:** February 29, 2016, 09:56:44 PM »

Well, another month down. How's it going for everyone else?

I managed to drop another day---this time I knew it, but collapsed into bed anyway. If you are so dead/ill that you can't concentrate, dryfire isn't going to help.

Now that the weather has warmed up, I've made it out to the range a LOT more often. Hoping to continue that trend.

Huh. I THOUGHT I had been getting more extended dryfire practices in during February, but looking at the record, apparently that has only been in the last week or so. Need to get more of that happening--particularly because I've got different types of competitions coming up in the next month or so, and each has its own little quirks.

USPSA is monthly, of course. But I'm also heading down to Wichita Falls, TX for the Level IV IDPA match later this month, and drawing from under the vest plus the various versions of tac reloads and use of cover (at least, the way it is done in IDPA) is something that can really be helped in dryfire.

Plus, periodically I also run reps from my carry rig. And use actual cover/concealment and movement in various drills.

So while Drill Zero (and its variations) are good for all of that, there are some discipline-specific things I should also be practicing...need more blue on that record!

The last time I was at the range, in addition to shooting about 450 pistol rounds, I ALSO shot a little video with my new suppressor---the tax stamp FINALLY came back for my AAC 762-SDN. On a 300 Blackout and a .223, that thing is great. (I also need to buy some of the 300 Blackout 220 gr subsonic to shoot through it. Can't wait!)

Fun times!

So how's your dryfire going?

abbafandr · « **Reply #17 on:** March 01, 2016, 05:36:52 AM »

I've only dropped 1 day this year (yeah). Lots of blue, a little green, and finally 1 red (yeah, redux).
I'll post a picture of my sheet, which I am also tracking on a spreadsheet (got a thing about back ups.)
Ready for the match Sunday, weather looking great.

JTH · « **Reply #18 on:** March 01, 2016, 06:42:58 AM »

Quote from: abbafandr on March 01, 2016, 05:36:52 AM

I've only dropped 1 day this year (yeah).

Nice! Better than I'm doing!

Quote

Ready for the match Sunday, weather looking great.

It's going to be a good time.

abbafandr · « **Reply #19 on:** April 04, 2016, 09:15:38 PM »

Well, another month gone! How's it going ?